cliff offer. he's right. we are better off stumbling down the slope like drunken fools than the republican offer out there. here to explain that and why a huge part of the talks making major changes to medicare may be totally unnecessary is jonathan cohn and joins us now. jon, i think that's a good place to start is this. itç seems like all of the discussions about medicare, in relation to the fiscal cliff or in general seems to have an ajumpgs a assumption it's a big program and in dire need for cutting and reform but there's a basic myth at work there of the efficiency of medicare. >> yeah. medicare is expensive. why are we going to have the big deficits? mostly because of medicare and medicaid. that's not medicare's fault. it's a very efficient program and run by the government. so it doesn't have a lot of overhead. it has enormous economies of scale and bargain for better rates of doctors and hospitals dictate prices so for what it provides, medicare's very cheap. it's getting expensive over